标题: 2022.03.18 香港现在是大流行病的中心 [打印本页] 作者: shiyi18 时间: 2022-3-19 09:55 标题: 2022.03.18 香港现在是大流行病的中心 Daily chart
Hong Kong is now the centre of the pandemic
China worries that a broader wave will hit the mainland
Mar 18th 2022
Give this article
Hong kong, once famed for its low covid-19 count, is now recording the world’s highest death rate from the virus. The city is facing a shortage of coffins; morgues are overflowing with victims; hospitals are struggling to cope. On March 17th 279 deaths were recorded in the city of 7.4m people. The death rate is more than twice as high as at the peak of Britain’s second wave in early 2021. One model by researchers at the University of Hong Kong predicts more than 5,000 people could die of covid during this wave.
In the past few months the Omicron variant has swept through the Asia-Pacific region. But Hong Kong is an outlier in terms of deaths. Its case-fatality rate of 2% is more than ten times higher than those of New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea, where cases are also far above previous peaks. The rate in Hong Kong for unvaccinated people over 80 is 12%.
Hong Kong’s elderly have been slow to get vaccinated and have almost no natural immunity from past infection. There are many reasons for their vaccine hesitancy, not least the mixed messages the government gave out about the safety of jabs when they first came out and the authorities’ lacklustre effort to inoculate those in care homes. When Omicron first hit, around 65% of over-80s were unvaccinated. Even after recent drives to increase uptake, around 44% are still completely unprotected.
Until recently this low vaccination rate has been of little consequence thanks to strict “zero-covid” policies across China. But as the virus sweeps through Hong Kong and several Chinese provinces report outbreaks, it is an increasing cause for concern. On the mainland, at least 40m people are under some form of lockdown (though the authorities in some provinces prefer the term “life on pause” to “lockdown”). Relatively few people have natural immunity and China’s health system is not equipped to handle a large wave. Beijing may be worried about a broader wave on the mainland.
